{"id":131629,"date":"2023-03-08T05:34:32","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T12:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=131629"},"modified":"2023-03-08T06:33:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T13:33:35","slug":"near-adult-bald-eagle-flight-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/08\/near-adult-bald-eagle-flight-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Near-adult Bald Eagle Flight Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six days ago I found two Bald Eagles feeding on presumed carrion fairly close to the road I was on in northern Utah. Both of them flew off before I even knew they were there but one of them, a near-adult, circled around and came back – twice. The first time ‘she’ flew past me slow and low to the ground, which allowed me to get 102 sharp photos of her without clipping or cutting off body parts.<\/p>\n

With that many photos to choose from I promised myself that I would limit today’s post to no more than five of my favorite shots from the series. Limiting myself to only five would allow me to take the considerable time required to do a good job processing the images, including masking the bird before sharpening to prevent sharpening halos around a very dark bird against a light background.<\/p>\n

Following are the photos I chose, in the order they were taken but with many, many skips.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

At first she wasn’t very close so she’s just a little small in the frame but I’m including this shot because I like the forward sweep of her wings and her curled primaries. Besides, with the bird small in the frame we get a better sense of habitat. She was so close to the ground I believe her wingtips actually scraped the taller sagebrush a few times.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Then she began a slow banking turn to her right, which tipped her body toward me and allowed a good look at most of her well-lit dorsal plumage. Her banking turn also eventually brought her considerably closer to me so…<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

seventeen photos in the burst later she filled considerably more of the frame. As she circled around she encountered several low hills so she had to gain elevation to avoid them.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

40 shots later she’d gained so much elevation all we can see in the background is the snow-covered mountain behind her.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually she was high enough to completely blur out any detail in the mountain. I like this shot because her mostly white head is set off by her dark left wing instead of the snow in the background.<\/p>\n

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I was very pleased with the sharpness and detail in my photos of her so I couldn’t resist performing a huge crop (4% of the original image) on the previous photo to show it off. I also wanted a better look at her bloody beak, which isn’t completely yellow yet because she isn’t quite a full adult. Her head isn’t completely white for the same reason.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, so I can’t count.<\/p>\n

This is photo #6 instead of the five I was going to limit myself to. But I wanted to see if the left side of her beak was as messy as the right. It wasn’t. This photo was taken after she circled around the second time and by then she was high enough to have only blue sky in the background.<\/p>\n

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One of the very few things I regret about having spring roll around is not having many Bald Eagles in Utah. Most of ours will migrate north very soon, if they haven’t started already. A few will stick around to nest here but not many.<\/p>\n

And so it goes.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note:<\/em><\/p>\n

Most readers have probably already realized that this is the same eagle I posted a single photo of five days ago. On that post I said that I’d received a rude comment on that post that I hadn’t approved but that I was considering including her comment in a future post, which would have been this one. At the time I said I was still “mulling it over”.<\/em><\/p>\n

At least two readers commented and suggested that I not post her snarky comment, which would only encourage her and others like her. I decided to take their advice.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six days ago I found two Bald Eagles feeding on presumed carrion fairly close to the road. (7 images)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[355,6,334,391],"tags":[6792,6794,43,3137,146,400,768,6793,6795,311],"class_list":["post-131629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-4-years-old","tag-avoiding-sharpening-halos","tag-bald-eagle","tag-bloody-beak","tag-flight","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-immature","tag-masking-during-processing","tag-snow-in-the-background","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/bald-eagle-2504-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-yf3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131629"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131704,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131629\/revisions\/131704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}